THE ZULULAND TROUBLE. T HE native unrest in Natal has assumed
a more serious character since it spread into Zululand. The chief Bambaata,, after running amok in his own district near Greytown, fled over the border and hid himself in the dense jungles of the Nkandhla district. The Zulu chiefs were summoned. to aid in the pursuit, and two minor chiefs in the neighbourhood, Siganandi and N'Dubi, who between them possess about two thousand huts, have flatly refused. Beyond this our information is not clear, but there seems a likelihood that they have actually joined Bambaata. At any rate, they have threatened Hashi, a petty chief in the same region, that if he did not join them in an attack upon the white settlements he and his tribe would be " eaten up." How far the rebels are supported by the greater Zulu chiefs, who own several thousands of huts, does not yet appear, but the matter is sufficiently serious as it stands. The white residents are greatly perturbed, and small townships like Mehnoth and Eshowe are putting themselves in readiness for attack. Unless the prestige of the white man's government is to be fatally injured, the rising must be stamped out at once and the ringleaders punished. Happily, the Natal Ministry have shown themselves fully alive to this necessity. They propose to mobilise the whole Militia Force of some three to four thousand men, and a special irregular force of a thousand troopers is being raised under Colonel Royston. South Africa is full of good irregular fighting stuff, and there will be no lack of offers of assistance from the neighbouring Colonies. Colonel Sir Aubrey Wools-Sampson, of the Imperial Light Horse, has already offered to raise from five.thousand to ten thousand Transvaal irregulars. The essential thing is prompt action before the fire spreads, for there is too much inflammable material in South Africa to allow of delay.
Though the matter requires instant attention, we do not think there is cause for any very grave anxiety. Natal has a troublesome and difficult job before her, but., so far as we can see, it is more troublesome than dangerous. Zululand to-day is not a country, nor are its people a nation. The small tribe which was raised by Tchaka into an Empire held its power solely as a military autocracy. It was their fighting tiscipline which kept the impis together under Din gaan and Panda and Cetewayo, and with the fall of the last monarch that discipline dis- appeared. Since its annexation to Natal Zululand has been split up among a number of petty chiefs with no central authority of their own blood. The most powerful is Dinizulu, the son of Cetewayo, who has given cause for uneasiness more than once in his career, but has never shown any of the military talent and ambition of his great predecessors. During the Boer War he and his men behaved well, and in the present crisis he has sent a message to Siganandi saddling him with the responsibility for Bam- baata's capture, and has offered the assistance of his own men in the pursuit. Further, it is more than twenty years since the tribes were in the field, and nothing passes so quickly from a native people as the traditions of warfare when opportunity is lacking for practice. The closely linked Zulu discipline, as inflexible as the Spartan, is now only a vague tradition. Nor are the tribes a rate of great hunters, since there is little big game, left in their country, and so the only other form of training which makes men formidable in the field is denied them. Moreover, they are armed only with assegais and skin shields, though a few rifles may have found their way over the border, or have been presented to individual chiefs as a reward for good conduct. Without discipline, without a central authority, and without adequate arms, we do not see how any people, even of the fine physique of the Zulus, can be a formidable antagonist to a civilised army. If, as we hope, the trouble is isolated, and the greater chiefs co-operate in quelling it, Natal will be undertaking nothing more than a small punitive expedition. Undoubtedly, however, there are disquieting features in the situation. The first is the time chosen for the outbreak,—the beginning of the South African winter, when the crops have been harvested, the period which the Kaffir has always chosen for making war. It may be accident, but it has a suspicious look of design. Again, there is the persistent rumour which has been going about South Africa for months that all Zulus in service throughout the sub-continent were making arrangements to return to their kraals at the beginning of winter. Such rumours are rarely without a certain foundation. Lastly, the nature of the. country would make the task of quelling a general rising a laborious and a lengthy one. Much of Southern Zululand is a broken, billy land clothed with dense bush. The Boers found that even the smallest tribes in the Northern Transvaal were difficult to reach when they took sanctuary in the dense forests on the Eastern slopes 'of the Drakensberg. As an attacking force we do not believe that the Zulus would prove formidable; but, unless the rising is confined to the narrowest limits, they may show a very stubborn and vexatious defence.
The serious question for statesmen in South Africa is,— How far is this spirit of rebellion likely to spread ? If it is confined to a few minor chiefs in Zululand it is grave, if it extends to the whole Zulu people it is graver, but if it spreads throughout the other native races of South Africa it becomes a peril of the first order. For, since the white population in all the Colonies is scattered up and down among a vastly greater native population, trouble may be looked for in every quarter, and the task of defence becomes almost superhuman. At any rate, a heavy toll would be exacted in massacres at farms and outlying villages before disorder could be finally quelled. We see no reason at the present juncture to anticipate any such general conflagration. It is true that no man may dogmatise about the workings of the Kaffir mind, and that native feeling runs in many strange subterranean channels. But the Zulus, as the people who for long made their heavy arm felt from Durban to the Zambesi, have always held aloof from the other South African tribes. The Basutos, who have horses and rifles, and would undoubtedly be the most formidable of Kaffir races in a rising, have never had any dealings with their neighbours east of the Drakensberg. The people of Moshesh can have no friendly feelings for the people of Tchaka. Elsewhere the natives are either negligible as fighting men, or far removed from the influences now at work in Natal. At the same time, it is worth remembering that the reason which in all likelihood is at the bottom of the Bambaata trouble is not local but general. We do not believe that it is the Hut-tax or the Poll-tax, or even the propaganda of Ethiopianism, which is mainly . responsible for the present Amt. We should attribute it rather to the effects of the Boer War. There the natives saw white Men win and lose battles, while they were kept aside as spectators. They became rich in military pay, and, not having suffered as the white men suffered, they began to look on waar as a profitable pursuit. While their war earnings were unexpended they were content to elijoy themselves; lot as these went, and the pinch of taxation and two bad seasons was felt, they began to show what Sir John Dartnell calls " a certain insolent independence." Such a feeling, if it exists, must be common to the whole of South Africa, and therefore we cannot flatter ourselves that the causes of the Natal trouble are local and exceptional. It is no case for alarm, but we would emphasise the need of a careful handling of a situation so full of unpredictable develop- ments. Natal has gone resolutely to work in quenching the first signs of flame, and the railway development since 1879 and the presence in South Africa of twenty thousand • Imperial troops may be trusted to make the work of isolating and repressing native disorders easier than it has proved in the past. Meanwhile we note with pleasure Lord Selborne's successful indabas with the great chiefs of the West, Khama, Bathoen, and Linchwe, which show that the High Commissioner is fully alive to the delicacy and urgency of the problem of the black races and the essential solidarity of all native policy.
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